PART ONE

"And the double chocolate soda goes where?" the blonde waitress demanded, shifting her weight from one foot to the other with a swinging movement of the hips. She balanced a trayful of soda and shortcake expertly, her china blue eyes staring off into the distance.

Grace Culver had been making a snake out of the paper wrapper from her soda straw. She looked up quickly, with a gleam in her eyes as they fixed on the double chocolate. But she answered the question another way.

"Mrs. Moody wanted the shortcake, Stella."

"Oh, yeah--I remember now." Dishes clanked on the glass top of Ye Blue Bird Tea Shoppe's front table.

And the swinging hips undulated indifferently in the direction of the kitchen once more. Maggie Moody regarded her shortcake with a two-hundred-pound sigh of satisfaction.

"Sure, it's a good thing not to be so weighty you got to be worrying over what you put in your stomach all the time," she observed. "When Terrance Moody was alive--three hundred and four," they buried him at, and a better man never breathed--"

Grace, plunging her straws into the creamy liquid before her, listened vaguely. Her sherry-colored eyes were fixed on the tall, cool glass with a gaze of real affection. Double chocolate! It was the high spot of her birthday spree.

Slowly, luxuriously, she began to sip. It was nice to have the day off from her job at Tim Noonan's detective agency. It was nice to be repaying her landlady's many motherly kindnesses with a holiday treat of lunch and a movie matinee. But best of all--the flavor of chocolate slipped down her throat, cool, rich, savory.

"--no patience with these skinny women," the ample widow of Terrance Moody was continuing. "You, now-- you're different. You're the kind that's born slim, and you eat your head off and still you stay that way. But when vain birds that won't so much as look sideways at a piece of candy for fear that--"

The rich Irish voice broke off suddenly. Maggie Moody had an idea.

"Say, dearie, speakin' of candy? Why don't I buy us some at the counter there, for eatin' in the movie? After all, it's your birthday and I've given you not so much as--"

"And after all, this is my party, too," Grace objected. "I'd already planned to get us a--"

But her guest was paying no attention. A box of chocolates--blue, with a silver ribbon--had caught her determined eye from the display case along-side the door. She was making for it like a homing pigeon--more accurately, like a homing hippopotamus.

Grace watched her with a little shake of her red curls and then turned back to her soda glass. Once Maggie Moody took hold of a notion! Oh, well--

The "tea shoppe" was pleasantly restful at two o'clock of a mid-week afternoon. The girl from Noonan's liked it. Too bad birthdays didn't come oftener. But, if they did, she probably wouldn't think to take advantage of them.

This holiday had been Big Tim's idea. She had forgotten what the day was when she reported at the office in the morning.

But not Tim. He had been her dead father's friend--had all but brought her up, in the other man's place, after a gang war bullet had rubbed out Sergeant Culver.

So, this morning, it had been Tim who had remembered the birthday; Tim who had pressed a crisp ten-dollar bill into her hand and shoved her toward the door; Tim who had bellowed to puzzled Jerry Riker, at a desk in the comer, that they'd have no doddering old ladies about the place this day.

Swell, salt-of-the-earth Tim! Even if detective work weren't the grandest business on earth--even if it weren't in the Culver blood--the fact that Tim was her boss would have made the job.

Jerry, second in command at the agency, felt that way about the grizzled ex-inspector, too. A guy like Tim-- "Counterfeit!"

The ugly word cut into Grace's aimless thoughts like a steel knife. Her red head snapped up. The tableau at the candy counter burst upon her with all the unreality of a group in a waxworks museum.

Maggie Moody's fleshy face was purple. The clerk behind the counter was frigid. Between them, on the glass slab, lay a blue-and-silver box--and a five-dollar bill.

"What do you mean, counterfeit?" the big woman gasped. "What do--"

"I mean counterfeit. The bill's a phony. It's faked. It's no good!"

"But I got it not an hour back from me best boarder!" Maggie snorted. "I'm tellin' you that Mr, Figgen wouldn't never--"

Grace rose hastily from their table and, abandoning the soda in its early stages, hurried to her guest's embattled side.

"What seems to be the trouble, Mother Moody ?"

The older woman turned, bristling.

"Tryin' to tell me that Mr. Figgen would pay his board in no-good money, that's what he is! When I go to pay the young man for his candy, them's the very words he ups and sasses me with! You can see--"

Grace picked up the disputed bill and held it to the light. She crinkled it deftly. Her eyes were unsmiling as she turned back again.

"He's right, Mother Moody."

Maggie's face went blank. A gray tinge stole over it. She ran the tip of her tongue along an underlip suddenly gone flaccid.

"You mean-- But--but Mr. Figgen--twenty years he's been--"

"Have you any more of the board money he paid, in your purse?"

Figgen's landlady nodded vigorously.

"Every cent for the month of November! And Mrs. Reilly's, and both the Hoffstadters', and old Mrs. Gilliman's. I was plannin' on takin' them into the bank as we passed by."

"May I see?"

There was a fat wad of small bills in the plump hand which snapped shut the Moody purse. Maggie held them out on an open palm--perhaps a hundred and fifty dollars' worth.

Grace bent above them for a minute, her eyes sharp, her fingers busy. Then she straightened slowly.

"They're almost all fake, darling." Not only Mr. Figgens' money, but other money that Mother Moody had.

The head cashier of the Importer's Trust downtown branch bank ruffled the bills through his fingers carefully.

"Counterfeit." he said. But the word was matter-of-fact, not indignant in the manner of the Blue Bird cashier.

"All but these few are counterfeit, Mrs. Moody."

Maggie faced him across the mahogany desk, her eyes stunned. Grace, sitting beside her and holding one of her hands consolingly, could feel a shudder passing through the heavy body.

"But----I'm sure I don't understand it, at all, at all. If it was only the money from one boarder, sure;: although even then I'd be doubtin' me senses, them folks is that close to me. But here's Mrs. Reilly payin' me the first of the week, and Mrs. Gilliman only yesterday, and--"

"Very odd," Mr. Albertson commented. "Very odd, indeed. They couldn't all be in on the counterfeit ring, very well. And there's a new ring in operation, ladies. A big one. The same plates that struck off these have been working overtime here lately. Yours is our--let me remember--our twenty-third complaint since last month."

It was his first remark which had struck a spark in Maggie Moody. She eyed the cashier angrily.

"Don't you be hintin' me boarders is a crime ring, Mister--Mister What's-it! There's guests have been with me since seven years before Terrance Moody died, and--"

Grace laid a quieting hand on her landlady's arm.

"There, there, darling, nobody's accusing your pets of having long jail sentences behind them. Mr. Albertson, I just was wondering--that's all new money, isn't it ?"

The cashier nodded.

"Fresh from the plates. Cleverest engraving I've ever run across, too. As I say, we've been fooled before by this same brand. There's a lot of it around the town right now."

"But not," said Grace, "enough to explain why every one at Mrs. Moody's should pay her with nothing but phony bills of small denominations." She turned toward Maggie. "Try to remember--was all the money they gave you new?"

The Moody head shook instantly.

"It was not, that! I remember thinkin' Mrs. Gilliman must of saved hers in her coal hod since the Armistice, it was that dirty. And there was a grease spot on--" Her heavy jaws dropped suddenly. "Say! None of that's my money! None of that's what me boarders paid me!"

The redhead caught her up with shallowly concealed eagerness, her nose lifting like a pointing dog's.

"I knew it! And the first time those bills were all together was when you put them in your purse to bank them today! So--where did you stop on your way from home before you met me at the Blue Bird?"

A frown, puzzled and uncertain, pulled Maggie's honest eyebrows out of line.

"I--I don't just recall. There was Louie's--the butcher on the corner. No place else, and I've known Louie since he was-- Wait now! There was the curiosity store!"

The sherry-brown eyes watching her face seemed to contract.

"The--what ?"

"That new curiosity store. You know--that place the Armenian or whatever he is opened up on the block behind us. That Ivan--you know--"

Grace nodded. In her mind she could see the new sign, carefully lettered, swaying above a cluttered doorway. IVAN JORGEN: Rugs, Vases, Curios.

"I know. Whatever made you stop there?"

"I was fixin' to buy you a birthday present. He had some strings of blue and yellow beads in the window--kind of foreign appearin' and queer--so I sort of went in and tried a couple on. But then I renumbered how you never wear beads--"

"Did you put down your purse while you were trying on? Even for a minute?"

"Well-- well, yes, now that I think of it, but--"

Grace, small nose quivering excitedly, swung back to the cashier across the desk.

"Mr. Albertson, have you one or two of those fake bills that have been used --the dirtier the better? And a fine-point pen? And a bottle of green ink?" "Certainly. But I'm not sure--" Grace dipped her hand into a pocket of her jacket. An official card slipped between her fingers. She held it out toward Albertson.

"It's quite all right. I'm Culver, from Tim Noonan's agency."

Grace paused beneath the sign, IVAN JORGEN: Rugs, Vases, Curios, glancing into a show window filled with a hodge-podge of stuff which was, indeed, "foreign appearin' and queer." Mr. Jorgen seemed to have a little of everything in his shop.

A thick, stale smell issued from the darkness beyond the open doorway. In the shadowy interior of the store, a lone dim figure was moving forward.

Under ordinary circumstances, the girl from Noonan's would have hurried past the place after one glance at the cheap atrocities displayed there. But now she stood her ground, admiring a particularly ugly vase in the background. A conspicuous red leather purse-very new and shiny--dangled loosely from her fingers.

When the heavy-set dark man had stepped suggestively to the door, she was noticeably eager. Her gaze, as she turned toward him, took in his matted eyebrows, his strong but sensitive hands, and the brutish jut of the jaw above his soiled collar.

"I wonder--could you tell me, please, how much that is? That vase in the corner ?"

The man bowed, rubbing his hands together across his stomach. Three gold teeth glittered in his oily smile.

"But yes, Madame. Ver' cheap. Ver' good work. You maybe step inside, like to see?"

Grace stepped inside. It was very much the sort of junk shop she had been expecting. There was some article in that conglomerate mess in the window to attract almost any eye--to lure the passer-by inside for further examination.

But there couldn't be many sales made. A thin film of dust was spread over the roll of wrapping paper beside the counter. Mr. Jorgen obviously wasn't making much out of his business.

"It was that vase at the very back of the window," Her voice sounded feminine and helpless to a degree. She put down the bright red pocketbook on the edge of a chair behind her while she pointed.

Jorgen stepped around her, lifted the bit of pottery over the back of the showcase, and put it in her hands. She glimpsed a Made in Brooklyn stamp on its bottom before his persuasive voice poured over her.

"Imported, Madame. Ver' fine. Comes from Latvia. A very special low price--"

The back of the redhead's neck tingled. She yearned to spin about and face him suddenly. But instead, still keeping him out of her line of vision, she moved forward a little and held the vase up to the light--studying it intently.

"No," she said at last, her voice regretful. "No, it isn't the right color after all. I wanted it for a special place, you see. I'm sorry."

Now she did turn toward him. He was standing a good two feet from the chair where she had left her pocketbook. His hands were extended to take back the vase. He was smiling unhappily.

"I, too, am sorry. Perhaps--something else?"

"I haven't time to look, this afternoon. But I'll certainly be back! Thank you so much."

She caught up the red pocketbook and tucked it neatly under her arm. As she marched out of the store, she was conscious of Ivan Jorgen moving along at her back and purring something about, "ver' fine turquoise bracelets, if Madame--"

At the end of the block, the black-and-silver facade of a beauty shop boasting the name of Maison de Chic glittered impressively. In its windows, an ornately-lettered card announced: "Paris Manicure Our Specialty."

Grace ducked quickly into the lobby. Screened from the street, her fingers fumbled with the clasp of the bright bag crooked in her arm.

A roll of small bills--ones, fives, tens --fanned open in her free hand. Her sherry eyes narrowed in triumph as she held them to the light.

On each of the noses of her own Lincolns, Washingtons and Hamiltons she had made three inconspicuous dots with the excellent green ink of the Importer's Trust.

But the noses of all the faces before her now were innocent of any blemish! The bills had been switched while she was alone with the proprietor of the "curiosity store."

It was Jorgen, then!

"And will he be sore when he finds out he's taken in some of his own phonies in trade! Just proves they're good, if they fool the man who made 'em!"

A black-gowned Frenchwoman, weighted down with artificial pearls, approached her brightly.

"Bon soir", Mademoiselle. A manicure?"

Grace shook her head.

"No, thanks. I stepped into the wrong shop by mistake."

"But perhaps, now you are here, Mademoiselle? Our Paris system, it makes the hands so chic, so alluring to the gentlemen!"

"I've just left a gentleman," Grace chuckled softly. "And I think my hand was quite up to the situation."

Six o'clock--closing time.

From the shadows of the cellarway across the street, the girl from Noonan's could see the new sign swaying on its iron hooks. IVAN JORGEN: Rugs, Vases, Curios. She smiled dryly as a random thought occurred to her. What curios!

Her eyes narrowed suddenly. The dim lights in the store across the street had snapped out. The bulky figure of the proprietor, appearing at the narrow doorway in hat and ulster, was locking up.

Grace watched, flattening back against the rough cement wall behind her. A keen-edged wind was whipping down the street, scurrying old papers and some bits of packing excelsior before it. But it was for another reason that the girl's trim figure trembled vibrantly.

Jorgen pocketed his key and swung out of the inky entrance. His shaggy head was bowed against the wind as he plowed off up the dark street. His massive shoulders were hunched.

A hundred yards behind, and on the opposite side of the sparsely populated thoroughfare, the redhead followed. She had changed her clothes since the afternoon's shopping tour. Her black beret and matching wool coat were inconspicuous, The red pocketbook had disappeared.

Down one block to the even numbered intersection, and then across town toward the west, Jorgen moved. At Seventh Avenue he boarded a downtown surface car.

Grace was already in a cab by the time the light had changed to permit the trolley to proceed. "Follow that green one and keep behind it!" was her order to the driver.

In the electric-spattered city darkness, the swaying yellow windows of the clumsy vehicle ahead were an easy focus for the girl's eyes.

The taxi was equipped with a radio, over which an adenoidal tenor was beating something about "a room with a view." Grace did not hear him. The only view that interested her was the back of Jorgen's hat, outlined against the bright, steamed glass almost alongside.

At Sheridan Square he left the car, heading west once more on foot. The girl in the taxi clipped a quick command to the man at the wheel. A moment later, she, too, was facing toward the North River, fighting the raw, chill wind..

Up ahead, the figure of the man she was following plodded forward with long, swinging strides. His muffled silhouette, as it was repeatedly outlined against temporary light from shop windows or street lamps, was peculiarly menacing. Like a scarecrow at midnight.

On and on. Two blocks. Around a corner.. Three. Four.

They were almost to the river, when Jorgen's figure swerved suddenly to the left--and vanished!

Heart pounding, Grace kept on. Had they reached the end of the trail? Or was it possible that he had learned he was being followed and was waiting for her, ambushed in some dark hole in the wall?

Whatever it was, she had to keep going now. Breathing deeply, she swung ahead--her red curls, free of the beret, streaking in the increased blow, At the point where Jorgen had disappeared, she looked up quickly--and once again her heart skipped a beat. There he was!

A narrow, sinister cul-de-sac opened off the pavement at right angles; a roughly paved, dead-end alley, on both sides of which grim rows of squalid buildings opened. The dirty walls were a literal honeycomb of doors and windows. There was no light except that thrown in from the street where she stood.

At one of the doors--a battered looking cellar hatch--Jorgen's hunched figure was pausing. Metal gleamed between his fingers--a key. The door swung inward. He plunged through it into darkness, and the panel closed.

Grace did not stop, or turn into the cul-de-sac. If there were a gang--as Albertson at the Importer's Trust had stated--others of them might easily be about the place and watching her.

Head down, hands plunged deep in her pockets, the redhead scurried onward, turning south at the next intersection as though a muffled man in a dead-end alley were no concern of hers whatever.

But there was a drug store on the corner, its grimy windows alight behind cigar boxes, magazines and soft drink ads. And less than a minute later, Grace was in a booth in its stuffy interior, listening to the ring of a nickel in the telephone.

It was a long time before her party answered. But before she had resigned herself to failure, the receiver at the far end lifted.

"Noonan's agency."

The redhead recognized that voice.

"Jerry Riker? It's Grace, Jerry. I---"

He interrupted her with a whoop. "Hi, Carrots! Say, listen--I didn't know it was your birthday until Tim spilled it this morning. How about a date to-night?"

"That's why I called you up," she answered.

"Swell! How about that new show at the-"

"This is business, Jerry! I've got a show of my own--gang of counterfeiters that are flooding the city. Stumbled on 'em by luck. Now listen! Get Tim. Both of you shag down here as fast as you can make it. I'm on Wickenden Street, a block from the river."

"But--but what's the set-up?"

"Odds unknown. All I can tell you is, the hang-out's in a blank alley about half a block east of the drug store where I'm phoning. You'll known it by the picture of Jean Harlow over the cash register. I've got to get back now. I'm watching 'em."

She heard the receiver click.

Jorgen might have gone out again already, Grace realized, as she moved back in the direction from which she had come with as much speed as she dared.

But that had been a necessary risk. She had been in a tight spot alone, and Tim and Jerry would be on their way to help her now. She needed them.

The cul-de-sac was empty when she reached it. Blank windows--some of them boarded up--stared down on the sinister alley like watching eyes. Behind a few of the cracked panes, stories above the street, lights shone faintly.

But it had been a cellar entrance Jorgen had taken. There was a row of them, all alike, yawning from the shadows on the side where he had stood. She hadn't had time, before, to notice which one was his.

Knowing only that it was the east side of the alley she must watch, Grace hugged the dingy bricks of the opposite wall and stepped forward into darkness.

At a point some twenty feet in from the street, a rain barrel had been set against the west side of the cul-de-sac. Its lee formed a shallow black pocket, shadowed thickly. Here the girl from Noonan's stopped, flattening back out of sight with a quick, deft movement. Her thin shoulders pressed tight against the hoops of the rotting barrel.